Oscar Hijuelos, first Latino author to win Pulitzer Prize, dead at 62

SLP2000012703 - 27 JANUARY 2000 - ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, USA: Oscar Hijuelos, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," reads portions of his new novel "Express of the Splendid Season" to a crowd at the Left Bank Bookstore in mid-town St. Louis, January 27. Hijuelos's new novel is the affecting story of an immigrant Cuban cleaning woman and the life she carves for herself and her family in the uncompromising world of postwar New York City. jr/bg/Bill Greenblatt UPI | License Photo

NEW YORK, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. author Oscar Hijuelos died during the weekend of cardiac arrest, his literary agent said. He was 62.

CNN said Hijuelos, who was born in New York to Cuban parents, was the first Latino author to win the fiction prize. He was honored for his 1989 novel, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love."

"I never even thought that book would get published when I first wrote it," Hijuelos told CNN in 2009. "And because of that -- having been poor in the first place -- I had nothing to lose. And not having expected it to be published, I had felt enormous amounts of freedom."

His other books include "Empress of the Splendid Season," "Mr. Ives' Christmas," "The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien" and "Our House in the Last World."